How many for the tango?

What to do about Sweden? The valedictory television time devoted to the late Ingmar Bergman did not dwell on the architectural aspects of his complex private life-but we can enjoy the fact that he could sneak out of Stockholm's Royal Dramatic Theatre, across the bridge and down the stairs into the Ornskold Hotel, make love in a green velvet room (still the hotel's standard decor) and get back to direct the next performance. Across the country it was possible for good old Sigurd Lewerentz to be Classicist, stripped Classicist, window and door handle manufacturer, enjoyer of cigars, encourager of guys doing naughty tubes-and-vents architecture, Romanticist, Brutalist and continue designing right into his 90s.

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Yet over the last 30 years there has been a deadly pall over the architectural scene and I suspect over other aspects of Swedish culture. Except of course, Ikea, for which we can all have a love-hate relationship: like Ryanair, low-calorie juice or lose-able folding umbrellas, we can't survive without it but get little real pleasure from its sheer sensibleness. And so with Sweden. Everywhere you look it is so sensible. Worthy, responsible, dull.

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Resentment towards Norway is usually expressed via the argument that 'they've got all that oil money'. But look at the number of quirky small buildings and clever chairs that are coming from that once off-the-radar country to the north, surely it's ideas too. More surprising is the sudden upsurge of clever, self-confident building that is coming out of Denmark--and no, you can't put it down to bacon money. If stodgy old Denmark has woken up, then the Swedish issue must be more complex.

The social and moral high ground that architects consistently occupied in the mid-twentieth century was insidiously worked over by smart developer-contractors, no doubt using arguments of 'economy', 'efficiency' and now, of course, 'sustainability'. The 'sensible' is still being taught in the three Swedish schools with ball-crushing exercises in 'social housing' that make things look worse than the stuff down the Street, plus a rap on the knuckles for stepping out of line, by worthy figures who have retreated from shrivelling independent practices. It's all very sad for a country that once celebrated spirit and invention.

The kids themselves are divided between the 'comfies'-those who enjoy the moral, the predictable and just hope that it lasts for ever (which might just be possible in a thinly populated, largely flat place with millions of trees)-and the 'chirpies', those who are both well educated, irritated by the frustration of it all and ready to do something.

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Throw in Aberlardo Gonzalez, a guy from Cordoba-the most Italian of Argentinian cities with the unlikely combination of a doctorate in Urbanism and a cute way with sexy nightclub design, watch him inculcate into the Swedish atmosphere from the tip of the country nearest to jolly Copenhagen and watch him slowly become a focus for the chirpies. Watch him in the traditionally most modest of the schools-that of Lund University (as in Romanesque cathedral/Tetra packaging/Ericsson phones) and begin to pull in the world. Add weird Poles, Zaha, Asymptote and a stream of zany, dedicated teachers from Arlington, Texas-the kind that get the hots when a student does something original. Mix the Texans with the Bartlett All-Stars or Itsuko Hasegawa. Spread-spread; what are Hernan Diaz Alonso and his brilliant missus, Florencia Pita, doing? (In from another funky Argentine city this time Rosario, but the type of Rosarians that came via Columbia and teach at SCI-ARC). Spread-spread. Now the chirpies can invent with 'Maya' as well as 'Rhino'. Spread-spread.

But a spread within the 'flatbread of a responsible curriculum' that seems to demand those tedious housing studies and a state of urban design that still seems to relish the world of cobbled square, correctly spaced bicycle track and rows of (medium-height-of-course) trees. If the comfies sometimes have a moment of fun at the hand of the visiting firemen, their teachers seek refuge in quiet rooms upstairs where they can presumably compare the quality of varieties of dandelion tea-or whatever.

At this point I must pay belated honour to the memory of another great world-vision teacher: Svein Tonsager, who, in Aarhus, Denmark brought the world to the school, rallies, workshops, the first Asymptote tented theatre and much else. A crazy, undervalued Norwegian Marxist-Romantic who died two years ago.

Fortunately, Abelardo is very much alive, though being threatened with retirement. Surely there should be a mechanism by which the future of an architectural culture is encouraged: make Gonzalez not just a Professor but a Director of the Institute of the North, or whatever. His bridge is longer than the one to Bergman's hotel, it crosses over to Copenhagen Airport, making Malmo/Lund a New Jersey for Denmark.

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Yet the chirpies are sufficient in number to almost certainly contain the von Sydows. Ekbergs, Asplunds, Abbas of the future. I have found them witty, well informed, quick in response to ideas.

Funnily enough, I have a friend who takes Ikea packs and then totally reworks the components, ending up with exceptional and elegant domestic fittings. His name is Patrick Weber-but then he is German.